September 1, 2011

*Closed - My Memory Suite Giveaway!

You all know that I love designing all sorts of fun things. I use Adobe Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator on a regular basis. I love the programs. I use them a lot of BUT with these heavy duty programs there is more than just the cost to your wallet. These programs require knowledge, experience, and have a steep learning curve. The thing is, while these are great programs they are not an EASY transition for someone moving from Paper Scrapbooking to Digital.

Recently My Memories contacted me about their software My Memory Suite and asked me to try it out and share my opinions with you. I let them know my terms: complete and sometimes brutal honesty, which perhaps meant I may not even recommend their product. They wanted my honesty, so I decided to give it a shot.

MY MEMORY SUITE(Scroll Down for Giveaway Rules and a Discount Code)

So what is My Memory Suite? It is a Digital Scrapbooking Software, designed specifically to make scrapbooking on your computer as easy as it can be. You've heard about scrapbooking - gluing, cutting and piecing papers, doodads, and photos all together to make beautiful artwork out of your memories. It's fun, and cute, but it requires time, space, and storage room. I do actually make a few pages here and there. But I really like digital scrapbooking. It's easy on the computer, takes up way less space and can be just as adorable.

Download and installation went smoothly. I also immediately got two of their Digital Scrapbook Kits (set of paper, titles, embellishments, etc. that all coordinate). I have a lot of kits already from other sites and was pleased to learn I could use them in their software still.

I sat down and got to work. First I tried my hand at designing my very own pages:

Then I tried out a quick page:

Lastly, just to show you what else you can do with this software I decided to make a personalized birthday kit (cards, banner, and buttons). Imagine the possibilities here:

All of this was very easy to make, took me little time with my little experience, and turned out looking really good!

Here are the things I really like:

I don't have to search for and place items like in Photoshop, but in the left sidebar I can go to the file I want to for photos, embellishments, paper, and with a double click add it to the page.

Ease of use. You do have to learn the program, but things are named well (and would make sense to scrapbookers as well as designers) and easy to remember. I've used the program only a handful of times, and feel like I have a great handle on it.

Everything is created in an album, which you can easily output to various media. You can just convert the pages to .jpg images, print directly from the program, save to various media types, and even create an album.

Each page has trim area guides so that your images don't get cut when the pages are cut and so that they are actually visible on the page, not hidden in the binding.

You can do a double page layout and mirror the first page!

I REALLY like that when you buy a kit you can also download the regular version of it to use for photoshop or other software programs.

There are quite a few photo editing options for brightening, changing colors and cropping.

Of course, there are a few things I dislike:

My least favorite thing about the program is that once you purchase a kit, embellishment or paper from My Memories you still have to download, and then install it. For those of you with the Silhouette cutting machine, that are used to Silhouette doing that automatically for you, it is a drawback. In one way it is good though: the more work for me the less money I spend! Ha ha.

I had a hard time figuring out where installed items were located within the program. For example, Quick Pages are installed as Embellishments and the entire kit is not grouped together anywhere (which I wish it was). The papers from the kit are ALL grouped, the embellishments are too, but not the entire Kit.

I really dislike the HELP site for their software. It is not directly searchable (as in, you can't just type in a word to search for it) but instead you rely on their alphabetic division of subjects to guide you through. I had a hard time searching for answers and sometimes figured out the answer myself.

Quick pages were a little tricky. The photo doesn't just drop into the square. You have to size it and layer it yourself. But it's still quick considering that is the only work you have to do.

Even there are a few things I dislike about the program I still REALLY LIKE it! You wouldn't be reading this post otherwise. I am pleased to tell you all I will use it and I really do feel that I will actually get around to the scrapbooking with a program like this, instead of having a whole bunch of adorable kits sitting in a file waiting for me to unzip them still.

MY MEMORY SUITE GIVEAWAY

My Memories wants to give one of my readers a copy of My Memory Suite! That's a $40 value!

How to enter:

1. Check out the Digital Kits and Layouts at My Memories and come back here and tell me which one(s) you like best.

For extra entries:

1. Follow My Memories on Facebook, Twitter, or their Blog and come back and leave another comment.

2. Follow Maggie Muggins Designs here or on Pinterest and leave another comment.

3. Blog, Tweet or Facebook about this giveaway and leave one more comment.

(*Please make sure that for each additional entry you leave a separate comment.)

Open until 10pm September 8th!

DISCOUNT CODE $10 off + $10 Product

Of course there's more! For those of you who can't wait, or who don't win, My Memories has given me a coupon code so that you can all save money on this program. Enter the code below to save $10 off your purchase of My Memories Suite as well as a $10 coupon for MyMemories.com store so you can immediately purchase a kit, embellishments, or quick pages and get going with your new program!

My Memories Coupon Code: STMMMS53416

*While I do benefit from this post the opinions in this post are completely and 100% mine.*